From the Dead

THIRTY-NINE

It did not take her long to pack.

Candela Bernal felt a little depressed that she had so little to take, so few possessions she could not leave behind, but she knew she needed to move fast and that this was not the time for sentiment. She took clothes mostly – shoved roughly into a pair of Louis Vuitton suitcases – some silly knick-knacks she had kept since childhood and half a dozen family photographs. She would also take the jewellery David had given her, of course. She was many things, but she was not stupid. She had earned it, after all. Besides, she knew that the time might come when she would need to sell some of it. Bracelets and fancy wristwatches were only things at the end of the day, to be admired rather than cared about. Staying safe was far more important; safe and well, assuming she could finally kick the cocaine habit.

Another thing David had given her. Another good reason to get as far away as possible.

They had talked about protecting her – that animal Samarez and the English cop – but Candela knew that it was just talk. They said she would be looked after in return for her cooperation, but she could see very well what they thought of her, that they had more important things to worry about than some mobster's girlfriend. Some druggie slut. They were like most of the men she had known, David Mackenzie included. Happy to promise you anything, to tell you whatever you needed to hear until they had got what they wanted.

When she had finished packing, she stood waiting at the window with a cigarette and her third glass of wine. She blew smoke against the glass and stared through it at the lights of the marina far below. She would not miss much about the place, certainly not the richer-than-you-are bullshit, but she would be sorry not to see the ocean every day, and the girls in the office. She had told them that she would need to skip the usual drink after work today. She had given each one an extra-long hug when she had left, and told them hay fever was making her eyes water.

She looked at her watch: the taxi was a few minutes late.

She had worked out the schedule to allow for traffic, leaving at least fifteen minutes to catch the train from Malaga to Cordoba, where she would be spending the night with an old school friend she had called the night before. Just one night, to be safe, then north from there – to Toledo or Madrid. She would decide later, once she was on her way, although perhaps somewhere smaller would be a better idea. In the cities, where David Mackenzie did so much business, where there were so many people keen to get into his good books, someone always knew someone.

And she knew he would be looking.

When the bell went, Candela turned from the window and walked to the intercom. She spoke briefly to the taxi driver, then buzzed him up to collect the cases. She took a last look around the apartment. Thought that, once she felt a little less terrified, it might even be fun to start again.

She had been pretending to be someone she was not for far too long anyway.

It took Thorne fifteen minutes to squeeze around the edge of the square until he found a space on some steps leading up to a bar. But he still had trouble seeing much, and had never been particularly happy crammed up against other people. He put his hands in his pockets, wary of thieves.

The crowd had left a corridor that was just wide enough for each of the marching bands to pass through. They came, with no more than a minute or two between them, the music of each fading into the next as the bands moved on to another part of the village. The uniforms were even more spectacular than the ones Thorne had seen before, but tonight the music was far less celebratory. The drummers beat out a rhythm that was almost funereal, and Thorne began to feel more than a little out of place. As if he were trespassing. Though every face he could see was open and happy, with the onlookers straining to get their first glimpse of the Virgin, Thorne started to find the whole thing positively spooky. He felt the same way about almost every religious ceremony, the tribute paid to anything that was outside simple human experience. He had once been unnerved watching a small group of Morris men in a Cotswold village. Their dancing had seemed aggressive, frenzied; the leader black-faced and sweating, glaring at the spectators, his hat shaped like a slab of rotting cheese.

When the crowd suddenly began applauding, Thorne looked to his left and saw the effigy swing into view and start its slow journey down the hill towards the square. This was way beyond clattering sticks and waving hankies.

Thorne had not got a good look at the statue up at the cave, but from where he was standing now, it seemed as though the entire shrine had been removed. The scale was breathtaking – twenty feet by ten, at a conservative estimate – and the weight evidenced by the fifty or so men needed to bear it upon their shoulders.

Thorne caught sight of a hand waving just a few feet away and watched as the Liverpudlian he had met the previous afternoon pushed his way towards him. The man seemed pleased to see Thorne and began raving about how lucky they were to be there.

'Has to be seen to be believed… Once in a lifetime… Real privilege.' All that.

Keen as ever to pass on information, he told Thorne that the men carrying the effigy – each dressed in immaculate white trousers and shirt – were all local police officers. He carried on talking while Thorne watched the enormous display moving down the hill and imagined every crime in the village over the next few days being investigated by distinctly lop-sided coppers.

'Do you fancy a pint?' The Scouser was now pressed up against Thorne, shouting in his ear. Then, as though his invitation were not clear enough, he made the universally understood drinking gesture.

Thorne fancied a pint very much, but he was less keen on having his ear talked off, or spat in, any more. He said, 'No, but thanks,' and edged his way through the crowd until he was at the corner of the square, at the bottom of the hill.

After twenty minutes, when the effigy and the hundred or so villagers who were following it had passed him, Thorne stepped into the street and joined the back of the procession.

Candela stubbed out her cigarette and finished her wine. She carried her luggage to the door and opened it.

'Just two bags,' she said.

Then she looked up and stepped back fast, tripping over one of the cases as she moved away from the door.

'Going somewhere, love?'

Directly behind the platform on which the effigy was mounted, a group of middle-aged men were carrying staffs topped with elaborate crosses. They were followed by the penitents, some barefoot or blindfolded, with candles stuffed into makeshift, tin-foil holders to prevent the hot wax falling on to their hands. Thorne moved along slowly with everyone else, the sense that he was intruding heightened when he was nudged gently but firmly to one side by someone clearly more deserving of a place ahead of him in the procession. Yet he felt compelled to follow, if only to see what would happen next.

He still felt uncomfortable, but the spectacle was hypnotic, the devotion oddly moving. The Scouser nodded to him from the steps of the bar and Thorne nodded back.

The huge platform swayed from side to side as it was carried, the bearers moving in a choreographed rocking motion that Thorne presumed made their progress easier. Every few minutes a man would turn to ring a bell on the front of the platform and it would be set down. It was not clear if this was part of the ritual or simply a way of giving those carrying it a break, but it gave Thorne the chance to move through the crowd and get close to the effigy itself.

He took out his phone and tried to get into a good position to take a few pictures. He thought Louise might like to see them.

The platform was thick with flowers: garlands of pink roses arranged around the ornate silver candelabra which twisted up towards the statue. The effigy stood beneath a silver canopy, with more flowers twisting around the struts and arranged on the top.

The Virgin was smiling.

She was five feet or so tall and had a doll's face. Her lips were bright red, as though freshly painted, but the pale flesh of her cheek was peeling a little in places and there were cracks on the hands that gripped a sceptre and cradled an even more doll-like infant. Her long, brown hair seemed too modern, though, falling in curls across her shoulders and Thorne thought the wig looked a little out of place beneath the sunburst of a huge golden crown.

But her expression was simple enough, and dazzling.

Thorne put his phone away and stared as the bell was rung again and the platform was hoisted back on to the police officers' shoulders.

A young girl's face, trusting and content. But with eyes cast down in understanding, or perhaps in expectation of the suffering that was so many people's lot in life, and the cruelty that seemed so much a part of others'.

As the platform moved, swaying its way out of the square on its journey around the village, the statue began to wobble, but Thorne kept his eyes on the face.

Andrea Keane's face and Anna Carpenter's.

A live band started to play, although Thorne could not see them, and those who had not already begun to move away sang along. Thorne felt cold suddenly. It was not a slow song, but the voices sounded sorrowful, as though the Virgin's expectations had been fulfilled.

For those few, terrible seconds before he reached her and clamped his hands around her neck, Candela understood what was happening. She knew how stupid she had been to give the police what they had asked for. How naive she had been to think that she could run.

His face showed nothing. He did not speak as he pushed her back hard against the window. He calmly moved one hand from her throat to reach for the handle on the sliding door, and she knew that there was little point in struggling.

But instinct made her fight anyway.

She kicked at his legs and ripped her nails across his arms. She desperately tried to move her head so that she could bite him, but then she heard the hiss of the door gliding open behind her and felt the wind move into the room.

Her bladder went at the same time as she staggered back, on to the balcony.

A jumble of thoughts and pictures in those last few moments. It was cold and she was only twenty-two and there was blood in her mouth where she had bitten through her tongue. She thought about her mother and said, ' Perdoname, Mama, ' in her head, or perhaps it was out loud when she felt the metal rail pressing hard into the small of her back.

She was over then – tumbling and gone. Those lights in the marina rushing up at her and the wind like icy water.

She screamed all the way down.